


Gimme an F, Gimme a U

by ninhursag



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Abandonment Issues, Caulfield, Handprint (Roswell), Idiots in Love, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Torture, Imprisonment, M/M, Multi, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sex Work, Sleeping Together, Soulmates, Under-negotiated Kink
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-25
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:41:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 7,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21558760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninhursag/pseuds/ninhursag
Summary: Various Tumblr ficlets, for archival purposes.Warnings, if any, will be posted in the individual chapter summary.
Relationships: Michael Guerin/Alex Manes, Michael Guerin/Other(s)
Comments: 78
Kudos: 135





	1. Alex is sleeping

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alex is sleeping. Michael is soft for him

Michael doesn't tip toe when he walks into their bedroom. Alex is sleeping, lips slightly parted, lashes fluttering, hair soft and mashed into the pillow. Alex is sleeping, but some preternatural sense of his goes off and snaps him awake if someone is sneaking into his space. And that ends badly.

But Michael's known and very audible footsteps don't trigger anything but the curl of a smile and Alex cuddling deeper into his pillow. Michael grins himself and slips over to press a kiss against the stubble scraped skin of his cheek. Another against that warm, pink mouth. 

Alex makes another breathy noise of contentment and maybe his eyelids slit open, maybe they don't. When he shifts, the soft old t-shirt he's wearing rides up, revealing a stripe of skin, the jut of his hipbone. 

It's tempting to touch there. And yet, Alex is obviously exhausted. It's tempting to let him rest. And Alex's entire body radiates warm, contentment, promises rest. 

Michael yawns himself like the sleep vibes are spreading and something tight and tired in him loosens a little. That settles it. He takes off his belt, sliding into the warm softness of that bed. Alex curls up against him like he's drawn in, heavy and perfect, and his own eyes slide closed.


	2. Shimmer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alex is sleeping off a serious injury. Alien handprints.

Michael watches Alex breath. Easy, deep breaths, safe asleep.

Even the tense line between his brows are relaxed. His fingers are loose and lax on the pillow. Soft sheets, washed clean and threadbare have ridden down to his hips. He's bare underneath, all warm, tanned skin over muscle.

Michael has eyes for all of that, but what he sees, what catches him, is the shimmer of his own handprint on beloved skin. The outline of his own fingers, caught and captured on Alex's chest, right below his heart.

He can do better than see, even better than touch the outline of the mark with hands that shake. He can feel the peace under Alex's skin, feel how deeply he's sleeping, how safe he rests here, under Michael's palm, in Michael's bed, Michael's powers shining on him.

There'd been a bullet hole there, less than eight hours ago, torn, broken skin and blood pumping. Alex gasping for breath. Alex's heart stuttering and skipping.

And Michael had run and screamed, knees bruising on the hard dirt and rock. Hands pressing, holding, keeping together, just keeping. Everything changed.

Alex's skin shimmers now, above his heart and he was here and he was asleep, not unconscious, and he was safe. And every thought other than the desire for rest, other than his dreams, breathed 'Michael'.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alex asks Michael to come with him.

Guerin isn't crying, but his eyes are too bright and his lips are too red, like he's been biting on them. Alex tries not to see it, it can't change anything. 

"You can stay," Guerin offers, quietly. "We could try to figure it out, if we both worked on it?"

"I can't," Alex says, forcing himself to look at Guerin, look him in the eye. Guerin's eyes are so red around the edges. Grief and sex look all the same on him, consuming. "I have to go."

He just about runs to his car. Guerin doesn't say anything but he can hear it in his own footsteps. Staccato thumping, don't leave, don't leave, don't leave.

One day he's going to come back and Guerin will be gone, he knows that. He just hopes it will be to somewhere-- anywhere. A long way from Roswell. 

Maybe, Alex can find him there. Maybe in a bar, at a coffee shop, over open mike night. Maybe in an office, in an apartment, in a bedroom, somewhere else.

He turns around at his car door, he can't open it, he can't. Don't leave. Don't leave. Don't leave.

He turns around and Guerin is still there. Watching him.

"Come with," Alex whispers, so quietly, he can't be heard over the distance, can he? Louder. "Guerin, come with me. You can come with me."

Guerin's eyes are wide and his lips are parted and too red. He heard. Alex forces himself to look and takes in a deep, unsteady breath.

"Michael," Alex says.

He swallows hard, all adam's apple. And just as softly as Alex had asked, he whispers, "ok."


	4. Overgrown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Michael and Isobel work on their powers.

Alex watched Michael and Isobel practice with powers from his seat by the fire pit. He could see them whenever he looked up from his laptop. There was a line of bottles on top of an old car that they were systematically destroying.

Michael was all in motion, half grinning, curls a mess, all fingers and elbows. He sketched out some idea with his hands, before executing it with a blast of TK. Another bottle fell victim, sending out a storm of glass that spun around and then imploded back on itself, all the shards pulling back into a tight ball.

"Show off," Isobel muttered. Isobel, who had looked nothing but grim and formal and perfect every time Alex had seen her, was barefaced and rumpled and dressed in Michael's soft old sweatshirt. It hung down past her fingertips, making her look like an overgrown kid. 

Michael was just as young, golden, when he leaned over to tuck a fly away strand of hair behind her ear. She smacked at his hand, almost smiling her annoyance. It had been a while since she smiled.

Michael's eyes rolled and he looked back at Alex and gave a half shrug, like, what are you gonna do. He and Isobel looked just alike in that moment. Just that Michael's open expression had just a hint of worry hiding underneath it not irritation. Michael's own exhaustion not hiding at all, even when he moved, written into dark circles under his eyes. Kid weighed down with too much grief.

Alex shrugged back and returned the look. It was going to be ok, no matter what it was. He was going to figure out how to keep them safe and they could handle the rest, overgrown kids or not.


	5. An abandoned place

Antar was beautiful from space. The oceans were so blue they were stained violet and the forests covered the endless continents.

On the surface it was beautiful too, the city Michael landed his ship beat. Windswept and vast, a place out of a dream. Towers full of windows, paved and tree lined streets, structures that were clearly playgrounds and gardens and open spaces.

Like in a dream, the city was empty. The gardens were overgrown, the lights were off, no one opened the shops. The towers were locked, probably biometrically.

Michael wandered the empty city with its violet sky and looked at the graffiti with words he couldn't recognize. He'd learned the formal language, for engineering and science. This was probably the equivalent of, this way for hot girls. The good drugs are over there. For a good time, call--

Probably the equivalent of, we're all fucking fucked, run. Hide. Die.

There was no sign of whatever had killed them, the war that Noah had talked about. No bodies, no craters or cracks or bullet holes in the walls. No signs of chaos or ruin.

The streets echoed and the wind whistled through the towers. There weren't even animals, no strange birds or insects to look at. Just the plants in the gardens, trees outgrowing their beds.

Michael didn't know how long he walked the streets of that empty city. More than a day, less than a month. He ate rations from the ship but slept out in the air. On what was maybe a swing in an empty playground that might have been built for telekinetic children.

Had his mother brought him here? A place like this? Had one of the towers been theirs?

None of the biometric locks recognized him and he didn't try to force them. They would know if it was his place.

He tried to decipher the graffiti and he waited. He wasn't sure for what.

This might have been home, but it wasn't anymore.

Finally, finally, on one of the days, he went back to his ship, and home called him. 

"Guerin," came Alex's voice over the com. Alex's eyebrow, lifted. The shape of his frown. So pretty, so alive, filling up the empty spaces.

Michael breathed out and smiled at him. And talked, then, about the city, the planet, the vast spaces. How it echoed. How home was so far away.

Alex's frown deepened. "Guerin," he said, without asking, "I'm coming to get you. Unless you object."

And Michael shrugged and looked out at Alex like he was right there next to him. "Not if I don't come and get you first."


	6. Michael Guerin is long gone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, this chapter is fixed now! 
> 
> Warning for imprisonment and implied medical torture.

When Alex got back from Germany with a fake leg and a desk job and a hometown that was never his home, Michael Guerin was long gone. It was what Alex had expected, even hoped for.

It made Alex smile, imagining Guerin in a lecture hall or a lab, or even as one of the engineers working in the oil fields, sweat on his forehead, the scatter of his curls, the way his skin had... 

Maybe, when Alex was separated from the airforce, from Roswell, he could… drop a line? Like an, an old friend would? They could meet up, be Facebook friends.

But a quick check of Google and linkedin didn't find him anything. A deeper search on Lexis lead to a blank. The last traces of Guerin in any system was a note that he had not attended highschool graduation and a diploma had been mailed to the group home.

Alex went numb, staring at the screen, seeing that trail gone cold.

He could have run away, but it wasn't to UNM and the scholarship Guerin had been hopeful for. It felt cold, in the old Valenti cabin, huddled in an old hoodie, remembering the toolshed and blood on a hammer and the terrified pain in Michael's screams.

That may have been the last time that anyone saw him. Except, maybe that wasn't the last time that-- that Dad had--seen.

The rage on Dad's face, twisted and ruined, and Guerin's hand, that hand that had rested on the old guitar, on Alex's skin, tracing through slick sweat and. And. And.

Fear was an old friend, creeping up his spine and stealing the warmth from his blood. 

But fear wasn't were it ended. Not for Alexander Manes, Captain. Just the beginning of his long slog for the truth, the one that he could have started ten years ago-- ten years and Michael was a skeleton in the desert by now, or a mummy, skin shriveled and preserved where Dad had buried him. He had to be.

Guerin was gone, ten years long gone, every possibility of him. Alex told himself that when he started looking.

Ten years, four months and two days before Alex talked his way into a hell forsaken hole of a prison that had no right to exist. Caulfield.

Ten years, four months, two days and one hour before he saw Guerin, blank eyed and thin, almost unrecognizable in scrubs and a buzz cut. All those soft curls that Alex had touched and tangled his fingers in, shaved away. But Alex knew him. Knew knew, should have known. Ten fucking years.

Guerin looked at him from behind the glass and Alex looked back, shaking, fingers tight on his service weapon. Alex thought about looking steady, solid, reassuring. Guerin's eyes were the same thin green and gold, like honey. 

I'm going to get you out of here, Alex told him with his eyes, he hoped. Guerin shrugged, small and painfully familiar. His gaze slipped away. His left hand was gnarled, twisted, like it had been abandoned to heal as wrong as possible.

Alex let his rage flare then, overpowering fear and grief and analysis. Overpowering everything, everything but-- I'm going to get you out of here. Then I'm going to blow this hellhole to its component parts until there's just charcoal left. 

And Michael looked up again, like he'd heard the thought. Maybe smiled. There was blood on his teeth like he'd been punched, bitten. Visible bruises on his arms where the scrubs rode up, track marks, maybe? Needles.

But. Maybe he was smiling when he nodded back, like, yeah, ok. Yeah. Burn it down, Alex. Make em pay. Like he had the answering rage under his skin, fresh and not beaten out of him.

His mouth looked bruised and tired and like there was a name he was saying. Alex.

Alex whispered back, "Michael" and got to work.

He'd stop when everyone else was dead.


	7. Michael Guerin is long gone (part 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The rescue. Aftermath of torture briefly addressed.

He couldn't remember much about getting Michael out of the cell. The locking mechanisms on the door were old fashioned, a relatively simple hack once he wired into the system. The hardest part was just getting his gear to talk to theirs.

Michael stared at him as the door slid open, unreality in those bruised eyes. Alex had seen it before, long term hostages, POWs, not comprehending rescue when it came. And that's what Michael was, wasn't it?

"Alex," he croaked, his voice low and rusty. A quick glance down to Alex's uniform and a shuddering breath. A not quite flinch. And Alex knew what it looked like when it was pride keeping someone from flinching. "You a guard here now?"

"No," Alex spat back, real horror in his voice. "I'm your rescue."

Michael's mouth twisted, eyes flicking back over Alex. "Didn't they tell you? You don't gotta lie. I've gotta go wherever you take me anyway."

Alex shuddered. This was not the time to argue. He said, "is there anything in here you need?"

Michael stared at him again, blank and blinking. "No," he said. But his gaze went past Alex's shoulder, to another cell. Not something, someone.

Because there was someone in it, an elderly looking woman, head shaved, on her feet, wide eyed. Her hands were pressed up against the clear walls of her cell. 

Her eyes were clear and wide, something familiar in the angle of them, the tilt of her chin. Her lips were moving, and Alex had just enough lip reading skills to know he didn't recognize the shape of the language they made.

Michael smiled at her, tremulous, reassuring. He'd smiled at Alex that way, the last time they'd seen each other. Trying to say he'd be ok. It had been an obvious lie then, worse now.

Alex didn't worry about it, he just nodded, tight and sharp. "We don't have a lot of time," he said, more to himself than to Michael, who was moving slow. Wasted muscle or injury, or both. "I need to get you secured."

"Secured?" Michael muttered, and Alex wished he could take the word back, because it didn't exactly evoke tucked into his guest room with about thirty pizzas and thick blankets and any fucking thing else Michael might need. But there wasn't time.

Alex hooked up his system to the woman's, lock. Michael blinked, surprised. Swaying on his feet. "This is a new game," he said. "Look, you don't need her. I'll do whatever you want. You know that."

Alex didn't say anything, because he couldn't think of what to say, what might be believed. 

"Please," Michael whispered from behind him. "Anything. Alex. If it ever meant anything to you. Please don't. Anything you want, anything, please"

Alex swallowed down now rage, hearing the implicit offer, wondering if-- when-- no. No. 

Michael flinched again from the look on his face. Hands splayed out like he was trying to protect himself. 

"I will kill them for you," Alex promised, forcing himself to hold Michael's gaze. "I know you don't believe me, but I'll prove it. I've done worse for worse reasons."

The woman stumbled out of her cell. She looked fragile, hands folded together. She whispered something to Michael, long liquid syllables. He responded, rougher, lower. They both looked at Alex.

The woman's hand glowed red, just for a moment when she reached out to touch Michael's.

Michael's expression shifted almost instantly, from the low simmering mask of helpless rage and hopeless fear to--

"Alex," he whispered, as if saying it for the first time. "You. Um."

"Yeah," Alex said, for once not giving a shit what he was agreeing to, not needing to plan it out and think it through, "We need to go. Now."

They ran.


	8. Psychodrama

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Michael and Alex can take each other to some pretty dark places
> 
> Warning for mentions of child abuse and unhealthy relationships

"You gonna make me crawl, Alex?" Michael muttered, eyes bright and careless. "That what you're into now?"

"Don't," Alex spat. "I'm allowed to be pissed at you."

Michael's lashes fluttered gold even while venom slipped out of his mouth. Lovely mouth, ugly words. "You are always pissed, but you're right, this time I did something to deserve it." He took a deep, considering breath, hunting down more poison, Alex watched him do it. "Now you can get to the fun part of watching me crawl around right? Belly on the floor, begging for you to scratch behind my ears? But a kick would be ok too, because at least you'd be paying attention."

Even braced for it, Alex almost choked. "It sounds to me like that's what you're into." He needed to not-- not engage with this.

Michael made a face, half rueful under the spitting rage of his. "I wouldn't say I'm exactly into it, but hey. Beggars can't be choosers and I'm ready to beg again." He slid right down on his knees on the scraped up floorboards of Alex's cabin. There was a feral grace to him, a cruelty that wasn't really aimed at Alex.

He licked his lips and curled his tongue, half inviting. "Please," he said, taunted really. "Come and put me in my place, baby."

A part of Alex wanted to-- grab at the stray curls, drag him in, pull and push and kiss that look off his face. A darker part of him wanted to see if Michael really would-- on his knees-- offered up and--

"You actually expect me to take you up on this?" Alex demanded, fisting his hands because he couldn't actually reach out to touch.

The mood broke a little when that startled a laugh from Michael. "No," he said and there was the honesty pouring out, like Michael always managed. "I expect you to kick my ass--verbally. And make me fuck off. I guess if you want we could skip that part and I could just fuck off."

It shouldn't have disarmed Alex, but that smile that was on Michael's face, a little cracked, a little open still. Michael's eyes, tired and bloodshot and true. He shifted on the ball of his flesh and bone foot, the weight of his stump pressing into the prosthetic on the other.

He took a slow, deep breath and watched Michael watch him. He was still now, when he was never still. Kinetic motion dissolving into chaos. Eyes on Alex's face now, even now, waiting to be dismissed.

Alex swallowed spit. "Ok," he said. "Have you ever done this before?"

Michael laughed again, but consideringly. He hadn't shifted from his knees. Still close enough to touch, if you reached for him. "You mean sexually? Once or twice."

"Was it, um, did you--" like it?

"Not really." There was another shrug. A flicker in those eyes and Michael was stark and honest, still. "Had it done before too much. The humiliation thing. Not sexually. Kind of not great.."

And Alex shuddered. Right. Like standing at attention for hours while his dad took him apart word by word. Cleaning the bathroom with a toothbrush, digging into the grout, kneeling. 

"Yeah," he managed. 

"But if you actually want," Michael started and then stopped. Started again. He was on his knees still. That expression, whiskey gold, not quite pleading. "If it's you, it might be, I'll try, if that's what you want, what it takes to--"

"No. Jesus, no. Get up," Alex said. Michael flinched, which made Alex flinch back in his turn.

"Right," Michael whispered, almost leaping to his feet. "Apologies, Captain Manes, I would never dream of defiling your--"

"Shut up, Guerin," Alex hissed in frustration and grabbed at Michael's wrist. He stilled immediately, body, mouth, words. Stared at Alex, all liquid again, waiting. "You want me to lead? Let me fucking lead."

He pulled Michael to himself hard and then kissed him very gently. 

Palms on skin, the warmth of Michael's forehead pressed in. The whiskey chemical scent of Michael's mouth. 

"You're pissed at me," Michael whispered through panting breaths. "What are you doing?"

"If I'm leading you belong in my bed, not on the floor," he said. And pulled, tugged, and waited to be followed.


	9. Accidental sex work

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How Michael Guerin kind of stumbled into sex work that one time...
> 
> For aewriting's prompt, who wanted a accidental hooker Michael.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No real warnings other than what's on the tin.
> 
> Set during the lost decade.

As a legal to be served adult, it was his own dumbass luck that got him into actually selling ass as a side hustle. He'd been drinking over by Saturn's Rings since Maria kicked him out of the Pony again this week. Just chatting with the bartender, a tall, black haired girl with legs aiming for the stars and ignoring the tourists. They were all gagging for aliens anyway. Assholes, if only they knew. 

It wasn’t a great day, lifetime bans aside-- taxes due on the airstream, fucking parking tickets which that dick Maxwell was definitely going to enforce on his ass and a fridge that had a half eaten jar of store brand peanut butter and some ketchup. And Saturn’s Rings insisted he pay for drinks with cash up front, so that didn’t help.

Two drinks, he told himself, two drinks, and then he’d get out of here, try to pick up some extra work off Sanders or something, make up the cash.

And there was a couple at one of the back tables, a guy and a girl, who are downright staring at him though. He caught the girl's eye when he was over by the pool table and winked and tipped his hat to her and she kept right on looking after that, following him with her eyes. She was pretty enough, fair and slight, with big dark eyes. Subtle makeup he could tell was expensive as all hell because of Isobel, an ugly ass handbag that looked like something Noah would pick out for a birthday present.

Her boyfriend looked him over next, which had Michael braced for whatever was coming. Shoulders wide, good hand loose and ready. Considering whether he was going to try to defuse it or just move right over and back up to the guy, go on and lean right into a bar brawl. Boyfriend was a big man, at least five inches on Michael, dressed in an artfully worn out t-shirt that probably cost more than an entire round of drinks for the bar, and showed off the muscle on his chest. Big hands. 

But that look he was wearing... that was not a fight me look. Michael blinked under the stare and met the guy's eyes. Dude winked at him. Huh.

Ok then.

He noticed again when the bartender brought him a shot and nodded at the couple. “From Tom and Aislyn, over there,” she said, rolling her eyes and laughing. “Want to hit some strange, Guerin?”

“I pride myself on being the strange that gets hit,” he said back, grinning himself and then, because, why the fuck not, he liked drinking for free as much as anyone, he sauntered on over to the rich people.

“Hi,” he said, dropping his ass into the empty seat between them. “So, you’re Tom and Aislyn, right? Thanks for the drink.”

Aislyn giggled, twirling a piece of perfectly styled hair. Tom grinned outright. “Hey,” he said. “My girlfriend thinks you’re hot, cowboy and I like to get her what she wants.”

Michael opened his arms expansively. “You keep buying, and I will be so hot, sugarlips.” 

Tom nodded, amusement crinkling around his eyes, like there was a joke in it that Michael couldn't quite place but didn't object to, “Deal.”

So there were a lot of drinks. Heavy pours, nothing stingy about it. And some stumbling off across town to what passed as Roswell’s classy motel, Michael hanging between them, feeling no pain.

The girl was soft, expensive perfume and perky nipples that sprang up to a peak under his thumbs. Warmth and goosebumps and soft, small breasts, just enough to fill up his palms. She smelled of booze and make up, the warm sweat of a living woman just beginning to slide through the layers of her.

The guy had big hands, like Michael had noticed straight off. Wide, blunt fingers, not slim and elegant and just the right side of careful on his skin like-- it was just different. 

It wasn’t like-- it wasn’t bad. It just wasn't careful.

In the morning he woke up gritty-eyed and blinking, alone on the lumpy motel bed. He yawned and stretched, letting himself feel the ache in his ass, the stretch. Then he spotted it.

Wad of cash in a rubber band on the nightstand. With a note, written in a girl's curly hand.

_Thanks for the good time, cowboy! <3 _ \-- T & A 

Michael blinked, thumbing through the bills. It was enough to pay off the parking tickets, the assessment and put a few week’s worth of gas in his truck. 

“Huh,” he mumbled to himself. Fucking tourists as a side hustle. Nice, who’d have called that one?


	10. Somebody bring me some water

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Michael and Alex are the worst at goading and pressing on each other. To the paaaaaain...

Alex didn’t expect to run into Michael Guerin outside the Pony or he never would have been there. He’d dropped off some information for Maria, mostly about Mimi and tried to cut the awkward small talk. It sucked, but he owed Mimi and it was… he owed Mimi better than this.

Didn’t mean he had to like seeing Michael looking soft and sun touched, sitting on the bed of his truck like he was waiting for someone. Maria, probably.

Alex tried to walk past him without stopping and for a second, he actually thought he was going to get away with it. He could feel Michael’s stare, amber in the fading sun, narrow eyed. Bitter. Well Michael wasn’t the only one who was bitter. 

Michael wasn’t the one who stopped him. He stopped himself, because he was an idiot and spoiling for it.

“You’re welcome,” Alex heard himself say, angrier than he meant to sound. “You know, for the information. For helping your ungrateful ass.”

Michael blinked at him, slow and lazy. “Don’t worry, sweetheart,” he drawled. “Your daddy probably taught you exactly how to deal with ungrateful asses.”

Alex’s hands curled up, fisting up without his volition. He took a step forward, glaring at Guerin, intent, so intent he almost missed the way that his body loosened, relaxed, just a smidge, hands in pockets. Pure anticipation. 

The picture of someone waiting to take a punch he desperately wanted. And that brought up too many images of Michael bloody mouthed and grinning and-- Alex was not that guy. Not the guy that made his-- his ex bleed. Never. “I’m not going to hit you,” Alex hissed. 

Michael rolled his eyes in response. “Awww, come on, all the hits are free for you.” But his face was set and smooth, still. "I won't hit back, just this once. You know you wanna."

Alex heard his own growl before he tamped it down, forced himself to calm his breathing. Ten count, backwards and forward. Until the red faded and he stopped seeing his dad's rage twisted face and Michael bleeding.

“Look, it’s ok, I know you didn’t mean what you said,” Michael said, quiet again once Alex calmed, like he'd never been aggressive. With a casual shrug and a ten thousand yard stare, both hands stuffed into the pocket of his old jeans. “No one is holding you to anything.”

“What are you talking about, Guerin?” Alex asked, quiet himself. Still focused on his breathing.

“Gimme some credit. I get it, that stuff about being friends or being family, that wasn’t-- it was heat of the moment, it’s getting late kinda crap. Now it’s daytime and the moment’s over.”

The bitter unfairness of that smacked Alex in the face. “Look, I meant it when I said it. You’re the one who decided you’d be better off fucking my best friend.”

“Yeaaaah, sure you did, it’s only me being such a dick that made you change your mind. I hear you coming in loud and clear, Captain Manes.” There was a tilt to Michael’s mouth, curved and cynical, the momentary softness home. “Sorry, I’ve done the Lucy and the football gig with you plenty.”

“That’s not--” Alex began.

Michael shook his head sharply, twisting. “No. I mean, whatever? You wanna win? You win. You are absolved. It ended with a whimper, you offered to play take backs and I didn’t bite. I picked someone else and I’m glad I did and she’s a better fuck than you too.”

“Wow,” Alex whistled taking a step back, half flinching. “You are… something else.”

“I’m something, all right. Look, I don’t know why you’re doing this-- this thing, where you’re pretending you’re so giving and charitable or whatever the fuck, but I didn’t ask for it and I don’t want it.”

“That’s not--”

“No. No, it is. You wanna use me as an excuse to try to take down your dad? You wanna piss on your family legacy and pour gasoline on the wreckage? I support that, Alex, but you don’t get to pretend it’s all about me. I owe you shit.”

“Well, you’re giving me plenty of shit,” Alex spat out before he really thought about it. Michael paused and actually smiled at him, genuinely for just a half second and Alex smiled back, helplessly. 

“Don’t make me laugh,” Michael muttered. “That’s not fair. You're still the dick.” 

"You're still the criminal dick."

"The size of my dick is criminal." Michael gave another sidewards grin.

Alex sighed, enjoying the retreat from the edge. "I mean, I can't argue with that." Then he swallowed. "You don't have to thank me. I shouldn't have… I was out of line."

Michael made a face. "I shouldn't have tried to get you to hit me, so… look, forget it. Just go home, Alex. Maybe… maybe spend more time playing with your dog and less time trying to rescue dumbass aliens who don't need rescuing?"

Alex returned the twisted expression. "Maybe you're right. Maybe it's about my dad and his legacy. And needing to see it through."

Michael laughed, not happily. He hopped to his feet and laid a hand on Alex's shoulder. "Well you're the one with the government funded health insurance. You can maybe see a shrink and work on that?"

Alex tried not to startle away from the touch. He leaned into it instead. Michael's eyes and his mouth, the close up scent of him was suddenly right there. "You really are such a dick," he said.

Michael's smile brightened. "Every day and in every way, sunshine." Then he walked, swaggered, really, off toward the Pony and Maria and it felt cold again.


	11. Michael and Alex at Caulfield

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tumblr thinks I can write imprisonment fic.
> 
> Michael and Alex are trapped in a cell at Caulfield. 
> 
> Warnings: implied torture, medical experimentation, sex pollen (not noncon, but not that sexy)

They take Michael out of the cell at random intervals. Alex has tried tracking the times with the tools he has. There are clues, routines, even without any exterior lights, even with the meal times and lights apparently thrown around haphazardly, just enough to throw him. The guards still have shifts, for one thing. They don’t go the full mile and change uniforms to screw with his timesense, he knows when laundry gets done.

But when they come for Michael, they catch him off guard every time. He’s tried fighting, he’s trained to fight, but it’s not like he has any prosthetic, never mind the blade that puts his balance to rights and lets him move fast enough to take down someone with training worth anything. He’s a fucking cripple like this, given just enough food and water to keep them going, in this cold, stark cell.

He tries to fight when they come, but they wrestle him down, and it’s not hard for them, he doesn't make it hard enough for them. Michael gets upset when he fights too hard.

“There’s more of them, Alex,” he says, hoarse and tired. “I don’t want them to hurt you. I can’t watch them hurt you.”

They haven’t, not more than it takes to stop him, get him down and out of the way when they take Michael. They don’t have any interest in hurting him it seems. It would be easier if they were in some ways.

"They hurt you," Alex hisses under the lights that are too bright to sleep with.

“Experiments,” Michael mutters, which is the most he’ll say about it. His body says more, bruises and track marks from vicious needles visible under the thin scrubs they have him in. 

They don’t take Alex anywhere when they come for Michael. Literally, he’s still in the old sweats and hoodie they grabbed him in, rank from being slept in, but no one takes him out of the cell in zip ties to someplace down the hall and out of earshot. No one strips him and shaves him and hoses him down with ice water until he screams.

The other prisoners get taken. He sees glimpses of them, old people, frail looking. They stare at him. They stare at Michael too, in mute horror. 

He does his best to cover Michael with the angles of his body, keeping him safe from stares if nothing else.

“Are they, the people in those cages--” he starts to ask once.

Michael shrugs and nods before he finishes the sentence. “Yeah, they’re all aliens. You’re the only human here that’s not a guard.”

Neither of them asks why. Bad luck, to have been in Michael’s truck (in flagrante, actually, pants literally caught down) when they caught him? Or maybe he was an intended target, his dad getting rid of his embarrassment of a son along with Michael.

It didn’t matter. What mattered was that he was here, in a tiny cell with a toilet and a sink and one wall made of a clear and strong material. Bug on a board. Here, watching Michael get dragged out at intervals and dumped back in, bruised and exhausted at best.

At worst--

Once he was blank faced, starting at nothing for six hours while Alex held his hand and listened to him breathe. Totally unresponsive, pupils fixed. When he came out of it he didn’t say a word, just put his head in Alex’s lap when Alex urged him to and fell into a real sleep.

Once he was shaking so hard his teeth rattled, too hard to hold onto without the risk of elbows and knees to ribs. Alex did it anyway, accepting every sharp, punishing elbow.

Once he actually cried, soundlessly, like he was afraid to make noise, tears and snot just running down his face and soaking into Alex’s knees. 

“I’m sorry,” he mutters after that one, “I’m sorry.” And there's nothing to even say to that. Alex strokes his shaved head and whispers something back, some words that don’t even make sense.

Once he has a fever, or something else that makes him sweat and moan, scratching at his own skin. Michael’s eyes are wild, the whites gone yellow, and he curls in on himself so tightly it takes Alex longer than it should have to realize he’s curled around an erection. Helpless, obviously induced. When Alex reaches for him he screams.

And screams, “No, no, no,” like a scared helpless kid. Alex scrambles back as far as the tiny cell will let him go, hands held out, palms forward.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, too low to be heard. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Later, when it's randomly dark, the buzzing lights killed for no real reason, Michael crawls into Alex’s bunk. He stinks, sweat and arousal, choking misery. Alex gives him a handjob, under whatever cover he can offer, while Michael clings to him like a dying man. He never thought he’d be able to do this-- touch Michael and feel like this-- but he never thought he’d be this helpless again.

Not since he was seventeen and an idiot. He was supposed to be a warrior, someone who won battles, not a-- not this thing, that huddled and held onto the man he loved with hands that couldn’t offer a damn thing, that protected absolutely nothing.

He was supposed to be someone who won battles.

Michael laughs at him, cracked and miserable. “You’re twenty-eight and an idiot,” he mumbles. And he arches a little, into Alex’s tight, grasping, spit and sweat slick hand and comes. 

Once they dump Michael on the floor and he… and he… he can’t even… he just...

They’re going to kill him at this rate. The other prisoners watch with big sad eyes.

The thing is, the guards and the system is set up to avoid presenting a pattern, but finding patterns is what Alex does. He’s weak. His biggest weakness is being broken and splintered right in front of his helpless eyes. His biggest weakness is dying bit by bit.

But he’s a code breaker. He's cracked harder than this.

The guard that comes with meals every third shift has a prosthetic leg, a below the knee amputation. It won’t fit right, which means there will be pain and a lot of it, but he’ll be mobile. And armed.

And at some point, when he gets Michael far enough out, he’ll have a telekinetic alien with him.

They’re getting out of here. Now.

When they dump Michael on the floor, Alex is ready.

He doesn’t know why they took him, but they are going to regret it all.


	12. Kissing under the bleachers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Teenage Michael and Alex kissing under the bleachers.

The bleachers looked so much taller from underneath. Michael could hear the crowd overhead, laughing and yelling and cheering, noise echoing, but the inside of his head was utterly quiet. 

Alex Manes was unzipping Michael's jeans, grinning and sly. His dark eyes were perfectly framed by eyeliner and when he licked his lips, the little silver stud on his tongue glinted.

The crowd up above them went wild when Valenti scored a touchdown but Alex just rolled his eyes.

"Guess who's turn it is to score?" he said, leaning forward and licking the shell of Michael's ear.


	13. Alex is a werewolf

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alex is a werewolf, Michael is about to find out.

Alex is a werewolf and Guerin doesn't know it yet. He's about to find out, the desert moon is full and he's laying back, alone in his truck bed, watching the stars.

The howling doesn't sound like a coyote, he knows that much. It's lower pitched, drawn out, with a growl under it. He can hear it getting closer but he stays put in his sleeping bag, hands under his head. The howling doesn't bother him, it matches his mood.

He feels it when the wolf jumps onto the truck with him. The weight of it makes the truck bounce. It's beautiful in the moonlight, gray fur and long, lithe muscle as it pads over to him, still making low sounds. It's damn big, but light on its feet, even though it's missing a part of it's back leg and paw. The loss doesn't seem to slow it any, it's still sleek and well fed.

Michael should be scared, but he isn't. He sits up instead and just waits. If he's about to be mauled, he's about to be mauled, but the wolf stares at him with cautious, dark eyes. Familiar eyes. He holds out his hand, carefully. Waiting for the growl or snap that doesn't come.

The wolf stares at him and then seemingly makes a decision to press it's nose against his palm. Michael laughs, startled and the wolf seems to grin at him, tongue lolling. 

It's fur is soft, soft and thicker and warmer than anything he's felt as it moves closer. A heavy, soft weight against his skin, settling up against him and pushing him down like a friendly dog looking to share nap space. He closes his eyes, safe under its weight.

In the morning, Michael isn't even that surprised to wake up with a naked Alex Manes curled up against him and on top of him.


	14. Kissing to distract

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> malex "kisses meant to distract the other person from whatever they were intently doing"

Michael leaning over a drafting table with a pencil in his mouth, head tilted and half smiling in concentration was always a sight.

Alex tipped forward, just watching for a while, as Michael drew out clear and precise lines and schematics, some with his hands, others with a light, telekinetic grip on a second pencil. He didn't have the right background to fully appreciate what Michael was doing, but he knew enough. 

That was why he waited until Michael was at a visible pausing point to tap him lightly on the shoulder, drawing that smiling attention to himself.

Michael's eyes glinted brown in the pale light and he grinned outright, opening that mouth of his to say something suggestive. Alex didn't let him, covering that mouth with his own, drawing him into a hard and deep kiss. Smiling himself at the easy sigh and the way Michael's lips parted. At the even easier surrender as Michael spread his legs, pulling Alex in closer.


	15. Talking about the past

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alex and Michael talk about their trauma. They are kind to each other.
> 
> Discussions of homophobia and child abuse.

"You think I didn't try?" Alex asked. He looked Michael right in the eye, making himself keep the contact when he wanted to look anywhere else.

Michael looked back, steady, thoughtful, kind. Everything he kept hidden under a layer of defensiveness shining out. "You were a kid and he was your dad. You shouldn't have had to try. For anything, but definitely not that."

Alex couldn't help a laugh. "According to him, it's all in my head anyway. Completely fixable with enough straight up motivation, ingenuity and focus."

That made Michael's eyes roll. "How do you use ingenuity to fix being gay?"

Alex couldn't help but return the smile. "Not sure about that part, his job was just providing the motivation." Both of them looked down at the same time, at Michael's now healed hand, then back up at each other.

"I get it," Michael said, leaning forward a little. After some wordless negotiation, mostly with tilted eyebrows, he threaded his fingers through Alex's. They were warm and careful. "I mean I didn't even have to be gay, just trouble."

Alex's hands tightened around Michael's. "Yeah, you know what? Fuck that. What you say to me goes for you."

Michael's mouth quirked up and he ducked his head. "Let me try some focus and ingenuity and I'll work on believing that."

Alex reached out a free hand to brush a stray curl away from Michael's eye. "I've got the motivation part covered," he said. Michael rolled his eyes and kissed him.


	16. Liz needs a nap

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Liz is supposed to be sleeping.

"Hey, you're supposed to be sleeping," Michael said when he came back to the lab to take his shift babysitting the current experiment.

Liz just laughed and muttered a half cut off Spanish curse. She rubbed her eyes and yawned to spite herself. "I trust you, Mikey, you know I do, but I need to see the results of this one myself. Only another hour for the culture to grow before we have some useable data."

"Or not," he said steadily, shaking his head at her. "Driving yourself to exhaustion is supposed to be my job, Ortecho."

"You're very good at it," she conceded, covering another yawn with a gloved hand. 

He sighed and looked her over while she stared back, putting her unwillingness to be moved into a glare. Finally he shrugged. "Look, sack out on the couch and set an alarm on your phone at the hour mark. If anything happens I'll wake you."

She bit her lip, considering him. "You will?" She really was so tired, the insides of her eyes felt like glue. 

He smiled at her, wistfully, and then shrugged. "He may be your person, but he's my dumbass brother. You know I will."

Liz let him guide her over to the couch. She was asleep before he pulled a blanket over her.


End file.
